1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



769 



first to bring to our notice the European dis- 

 coveries. Then, for years afterward, only a 

 dozen men or so, such as Grimm, Muth, Ben- 

 ton, etc., read regularly the foreign bee pub- 

 lications. Now not only our bee journals 

 give us daily mention of European questions, 

 but our own papers are noticed in Europe, 

 and not a month passes without some quota- 

 tions being made from nearly every bee pub- 

 lication of America. The increase in inter- 

 national information is becoming very com- 

 mon, and will certainly prove of benefit to 

 all. 

 Hamilton, 111., April 13. 



COMB HONEY. 



How to Keep it from Becoming Water- 

 soaked; Carbon Bisulphide to Kill 

 Moths. 



BY DR. C. C. MILLER. 



A correspondent desires me to talk in 

 Gleanings about keeping comb honey, and 

 writes: 



I can keep mice out by a mouse-tight room. I can 

 keep ants out by putting the honey on tables the legs 

 of which stand in tin cans with water in them. But 

 here is the rub: How can I keep it from " sweating" 

 and keep it from moth? I put it upstairs on the south 

 side of my house, out of the supers, on tables, and it 

 would drip some even then. If I leave it in supers it 

 would cure rather less; but I could treat it with bi- 

 sulphide of carbon, which would be rather difficult if 

 out of section-holders. And still another difficulty: 

 This is over living and sleeping rooms. I should hate 

 to put bisulphide of carbon upstairs and go to sleep 

 under it, for I might go out of the bee business rather 

 suddenly. Of course. I might get rid of some of the 

 trouble by building a honey-house; but there are hun- 

 dreds, like myself, who haven't bees enough to war- 

 rant building one. 



Information along this line would be very instruc- 

 tive to me and lots of others. 



Years ago I had no little trouble with 

 worms (begging Pi'of. Cook's pardon for us- 

 ing the short name for the larvae of the bee- 

 moth) in sections. No matter how free from 

 them the sections appeared to be when taken 

 from the hives, in the course of a week or 

 two the work of the little miscreants would 

 appear. It seems difficult to understand how 

 a moth could get through the crowd of bees 

 and be allowed to deposit her eggs in the 

 sections while on the hive, but somehow they 

 did it; for if a lot of sections were sealed 

 hermetically immediately upon their being 

 taken from the hives the worms would ap- 

 pear in due time all the same, showing clear- 

 ly that the eggs were there while the sections 

 were still occupied by the bees. 



Of course, nothing could be directly done 

 to prevent the laying of the eggs, so I re- 

 sorted to after-treatment. The farst appear- 

 ance of any thing wrong would be little 

 heaps of fine white powder, in each of which 

 was a worm so small as almost to escape ob- 

 servation. These beginnings were generally 

 on the comb built next to the wood. If a 

 cell contained pollen, that was a favorite 

 starting-place; also the body of a dead bee. 



Don't ask me how a dead bee could be left 

 in the hive, or how a moth could lay an egg 

 on it, either before or after its death. I don't 

 know. I only know that, in the rare cases 

 in which a dead bee was found on the bot- 

 tom-bar of a section, a worm was sure to ap- 

 pear there in due time. 



I treated them to the fumes of sulphur. A 

 very little of the fumes will kill these very 

 young larva3, and ten times as much will 

 scarcely affect one three-fourths of an inch 

 long. Sulphur does not affect the eggs. 

 Freezing kills them; but, of course, I could 

 not wait for freezing weather. About two 

 weeks after the honey was taken off, the first 

 fumigation occurred, with perhaps i pound 

 of sulphur for each 100 cubic feet of space. 

 Too heavy sulphuring greens the sections. 

 That left some eggs which would hatch in 

 the next two weeks, when they were fumed 

 again. The two treatments were enough. 

 There were plenty of cracks in the room 

 where moths might have entered, but they 

 never did that I knew. 



Instead of sulphur I suppose I should now 

 prefer bisulphide of carbon. It hardly seems 

 that it ought to be dangerous to sleep in a 

 room beneath; for if you operated in the 

 morning you could air thoroughly before 

 night, and with your sleeping-room windows 

 wide open you ought to be pretty safe. At 

 any rate, the smell ought to warn you of any 

 danger. An important advantage of the bi- 

 sulphide is that it kills both eggs and larvae, 

 requiring only one treatment. 



I said I had trouble years ago. I never 

 pay any attention to worms nowadays, so 

 seldom does any trouble occur that it isn't 

 worth minding. I don't know what should 

 make the difference unless it be that former- 

 ly I had black bees, and now there is more 

 or less Italian blood in all of them. Italian 

 blood is perhaps the best vermifuge. 



I don't know of any drug that's good for 

 watery honey. Honey under cerlain condi- 

 tions seems to have a liking for moisture; 

 and the greener the honey, the greater seems 

 the liking. Likewise the longer honey is on 

 the hive the less likely it is to become watery. 

 I have seen sections in which the air-space 

 under the cappings was entirely filled by the 

 thinned honey, making the sections look wa- 

 tery and dark, while other sections right be- 

 side them showed no appearance of being 

 affected. The first has been filled in a flush 

 of honey, and taken from the hive just as 

 soon as sealed, while the others were left on 

 till the bees began to darken the cappings of 

 some of the sections. So one thing to look 

 out for is not to be in too much of a rush to 

 take off sections, especially when bees are 

 storing very rapidly. 



A damp cellar is one of the worst places 

 for honey. Another bad place is a room 

 opening off from a kitchen, the room being 

 colder than the kitchen. The steamy air 

 from the kitchen gives out its moisture in the 

 cooler room, and the honey grabs for it. Yet 

 the honey will be all I'ight in the kitchen it- 

 self, in spite of the steam, for the greater 

 heat keeps drying it out. 



